Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products: method proposal and preliminary assessment of hydrous ethanol.

Keywords in English

Alcohol as Fuel
Life Cycle Assessment of Products
Sustainable Development

Abstract in English

A method for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products is proposed and applied. In this method, the individuals that constitute the human resources play the role of vectors connecting the social system and the product system. Two categories of social sustainability are defined: 1) Basic Needs Fulfillment; and, 2) Intellectual Autonomy. The Annual Monetary Income, in monetary units, is the indicator of the former category. The Job Duration Adjusted Schooling is the indicator of the later category. The individualss schooling, in years of study equivalent, is multiplied by the number of months that the link between the social and the product systems lasted, in the reference year of the assessment. Reference criteria are defined for the assessment of the indicators. The income and the adjusted schooling are impacted by two inequality gravity factors. One factor concerns the inequality gravity among the individuals of the human resource. The other factor concerns the inequality gravity between the individuals in the human resource and the consumer groups. The results are compared to reference values of minimum sustainability for each category of sustainability. A mathematical model for aggregation of category indicators is developed to not allow that a positive result for any category indicator, or set of categories, offsets a negative result in any other sustainability category, or set of categories. This method is applied to a preliminary assessment of the Hydrous Ethyl Alcohol Fuel.

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